


Stranger In A Forgotten Land

by venefica_aura (crankyoldman)



Series: Psychobabble [1]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-28
Updated: 2009-11-28
Packaged: 2017-10-03 21:56:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crankyoldman/pseuds/venefica_aura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Boys rarely know the men they're going to grow up to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stranger In A Forgotten Land

**Author's Note:**

> This is set way before Before Crisis, hence why Veld and Hojo are wee kids. Ifalna's age, well, I guess I take the Ancient part of Ancients a bit literally. XD

  


“You seem pretty angry.”

Toshiro Hojo didn’t notice the boy sitting not far away from where he’d started punching at a wall rather unsuccessfully. He was a little slip of a shadow, really.

“What’s it your business?!” Toshiro was rather mad at his uncle, who’d lectured him again about a bunch of crap that didn’t matter. Stupid uncle. Stupid country. Stupid unchanging place.

“It’s not.”

“Well this building offends me. I’m trying to beat it up.”

The other boy snickered. “Losing battle.”

“Oh, like you’re any better at beating up buildings.”

“Maybe I am.”

He came out from the alcove he’d been sitting in and studied the wall. Now that Toshiro got a good look at him, he looked around his age, and very not Wutain. His skin was a little too dark and his hair a little too light. He had observant brown eyes, though. That was interesting.

“You’re not huge; you’re just about my size. You can’t beat up a building.”

“Depends on your definition of beating up.”

A smart ass. Though not really. At least more interesting than some of the boring adolescents that milled about his uncle’s dojo. All ritual and no curiosity. It was a shame.

“I mean beating up as in taking my fists and making the building my bitch.” Toshiro didn’t use certain language to be crude, it was more a sign of annoyance. Or maybe not really annoyance.

A hint of a smirk, though Toshiro supposed that this shadow of a boy wasn’t actually arrogant. His tone didn’t sound like that. “I wouldn’t bother with that method.”

“You got a name?”

“Do you?”

He didn’t want to have to drag the information out of the boy. Toshiro was impatient by nature, and even if mind games were a great way to get adults to leave him alone, he didn’t particularly feel like having to play them in order to get someone’s _name_. Then again, if he just gave his name, it would end.

“Toshiro.”

The boy smirked. “Kyoshi.”

Obviously, that couldn’t have been the name he was born with. He was most certainly not Wutain. Could have been adopted, though, and if there was anything about this country, it was that they had to rename just about everything into their language. The name meant ‘quiet one’, though, and this boy didn’t seem particularly quiet. Or maybe he was just annoying to people his own age. Adults tended to implant their wishful thinking onto their children.

Sometimes he had to wonder what his parents were thinking when they named him.

“So where are you from, Kyoshi?”

“Around.”

“You’re not being very specific.”

“I don’t have to be.”

It was then that Toshiro decided that despite his attitude and evasiveness, that he kind of liked Kyoshi. If only for the fact that people didn’t generally take his bait for word games nor baited him. Maybe he had an annoying traditionalist family too.

—

Kyoshi did a great many things in the city. He wasn’t always good at everything–in fact, he was often quite the opposite. The chores he did often led to more chores, for his lack of skill in some things. But Toshiro had noticed that he would work at it until his debt was done. Sometimes he actually got the hang of things.

He was cutting wood now, swinging the axe with a precision that suggested he’d been called to that chore a lot. Toshiro held no allusions that Kyoshi belonged to any family–he belonged to the streets of the city. He thought it was pretty dumb that someone would run away to a place like this, though.

“Where are your parents?” Toshiro asked, never afraid to be blunt. Kyoshi shrugged.

“No, really. You’re not from here. Why are you here?”

The axe fell, making a sharp sound as it sliced through the wood and a dull sound when it hit the tree trunk used as a base. Toshiro had been reading a lot about physics, and realized that Kyoshi had finally figured out the strength to cutting wood had nothing to do with the strength of the arm, but the force of the weight of the axe head. Still, there were some muscles in his thin arms.

He stood there for a while afterward, as if he were drawing stories out of the wood.

“There were too many of us,” Kyoshi finally said, placing the next piece on the makeshift block.

“Too many of what?”

“Brothers and sisters.”

“That’s a stupid reason to leave home.”

And he _looked_ at him, with his skin just too dark and his hair and eyes too light to be Wutain and Toshiro might have felt _afraid_ for a minute. Not because he feared that Kyoshi would do anything–despite the axe in his hands–but more that there was something there he would not, and could not understand. And people always feared what they didn’t understand.

“I suppose it is,” he said instead, diplomatically, going back to chopping wood.

—

Toshiro knew there were some things that Kyoshi did that weren’t right. One could say that the only harm done was to himself. There were debts to pay, things he’d broken that needed to be replaced and temporary lodgings to keep the sea spray from freezing him to death. Toshiro knew, and sometimes almost said something. But he didn’t. Sometimes he would find Kyoshi in a tree, whistling to himself.

He realized he never said anything because he was waiting for him to cry, maybe. Say something, at least. But he never did. Maybe Toshiro had thought they were friends enough that Kyoshi would confide in him, and maybe the realization that he would get nothing out of him made him bitter. The longer he was around him, sometimes skipping lessons to see what odd job he had that week, the more he understood why people called him _quiet one_.

Boys like that always grew up into prideful, stubborn men.

—

“FIVE HUNDRED GIL. OR I WILL TAKE IT FROM YOUR FLESH!”

It had been Toshiro’s fault, truthfully. That Kyoshi had taken the heat for it both thrilled and annoyed him. He wanted to believe it was a sign that some things were mutual, but the reality was, Kyoshi always put himself in harm’s way on the behalf of others. Even his running away, when Toshiro stopped to think about it, was something he’d done on behalf of his family. Large families were hard to feed, and there had been news of a drought in the regions around Kalm.

Places where people had eyes like Kyoshi’s.

He put the bitter thoughts away when he realized that the boy was _scared_. The acupuncturist was an imposing woman, and her husband even more so. Toshiro had only meant it as a joke, really, he hadn’t meant to break it. He’d only wanted to see Kyoshi cry. Fear wasn’t what he’d wanted to see at all.

“What has this boy done to cause such anger?”

His uncle told stories about voices like that. Mermaids and demons sounded like that–smooth, even, a song more than a phrase. What was worse, the pot or the fire?

Of course, he looked at her, as did Kyoshi. Mermaids didn’t have eyes that green, and demons were supposed to have red ones. The frightened boy that stood next to him now stood taller, drinking in her lovely face like she was the only kindness he’d ever seen.

The bitterness returned. Toshiro had shown him kindness, the _real_ sort. He’d shown him which people to avoid. It was Kyoshi’s fault that he didn’t avoid them.

“If it’s simply money, I can pay his debt.”

He would remember eyes like that, until he was old.

—

They were much too young to be drinking the fiery drink, but Kyoshi had said that he’d wanted to talk. Toshiro had been spending more of his days at study, taking apart butterfly wings and seeing if they were more beautiful in pieces. So they sat on the stone wall that extended down from the dojo, the sun on their backs as the day slipped into the sea.

Old Wutains were superstitious about the “elements”–it had long been proven they weren’t elements at all–but he’d decided that Kyoshi was an unstable mix of wood and water. He smelled like sea salt and dirt most days, but something green and leafy scented sometimes wafted his way with the breeze. Of course, it was _her_ influence. She’d changed everything.

“The Lady is going to be leaving soon.” Kyoshi had been working for an old man that needed to be read to–it was a good change from some of the things he used to do. Still, he kept chopping wood, as evidenced by his broadened shoulders and stronger looking arms. Toshiro would have a few years to catch up despite being older, and even then, he doubted that he’d look quite as good. The Hojos were wiry and crooked people in body. That was just how they were.

He’d heard war on the horizon, whispered amongst the servants of his house. Yes, Toshiro Hojo was not a poor man’s son.

“Well, a lot of people will be leaving Wutai.”

“I think I want to fight.”

It was absurd, really. Kyoshi was too young for the army. He half expected to hear that he was going to go with the Lady, following what he was sure the boy was smitten with. But it was the infuriating sense of nobility that was peaking out now; like a indictment on his own cowardice. Toshiro wanted to leave as soon as possible. He’d said because of education, but really, the idea of war put a cold rock in his stomach. He’d read about it, and that was enough.

If he were to get his hands dirty, it would be in a controlled environment.

“But you’re not even Wutain.”

Kyoshi smiled then, an almost shy type of smile that belied that he was growing up into one charming bastard. “I like Wutai.”

The sun eventually did set, and they stumbled back to their prospective houses, sometimes singing–badly on Toshiro’s part, a little better on Kyoshi’s. Old ladies sometimes threw curses at them, and Kyoshi smiled charmingly at them. Maybe they talked about seeing the Capitol sometime. There were a great many things that were said that probably weren’t meant.

At the door, Kyoshi patted Toshiro’s back and said, “Thanks, friend.” As if that made everything ok.

—

It was too bad that he liked Wutai. Wutai didn’t like foreigners, and nothing could change that.

  



End file.
